Supernatural: Stages of Belief
Claire Novak disappears, one night in September, from a quiet suburb in Pontiac, Illinois. It’s a case that baffles the detectives as much as it terrifies the community, spreads unease and fear. “Who would do something like that?” people ask among themselves, and the “someone should’ve kept a closer eye on her” goes unsaid.
But they do agree-quietly, of course, and never when Jimmy and Amelia are around-that it’s a good story, from an objective spectator’s point of view. And they’re all spectators here, aren’t they, keeping a close watch on the papers and news reports, visiting the Novaks to ask about everyday trivialities in one breath and their missing daughter in the next. Collecting-even as they warn their own children to stay close, don’t wander, never wander-articles with Claire’s face splashed across the pages in bold colors with bolder headlines, paragraphs of fact and speculation crammed so tightly together that they began to blur.
People love a good story, as long as it isn’t happening to them.
Claire smiles down from pictures stapled to telephone poles and wooden fences, stares up from police reports and missing person posters torn from walls and railings by weather and time. She goes from being just Claire Novak to Haveyouseenthisgirl?ClaireNovak, the friend of a friend that everyone suddenly knew-oh yes, I’ve met her before-did you hear what they’re saying about her now-
And if none of those people know that the morning Amelia went to wake Claire up for school, the bed was already cold, the doors and windows still locked, well. It wouldn’t have helped them find her, anyway.
~*~
Weeks ago, August heat melts into September, and Claire is safe and home and drifting away. Jimmy dreams, the mundane and the extraordinary creeping behind his eyelids: a road, a revolving sky, the sound of thunder on his heels.
And then he’s at a campground, the carnival he and Amelia took Claire to on her fifth birthday. Jimmy thinks of Claire at five, still short enough that she had to reach up to grasp her parents’ hands, a small, steady figure linking them all together. Even now he remembers how had she refused to ride the Ferris wheel, skipping past the operator and the games (rigged, probably, so Amelia would never let her play, but later that day Jimmy snuck her a dollar anyway, when Amelia wasn’t watching) to head straight for the funhouse. In his dream she is far ahead, slipping her way easily through gaps in the crowd as he falls farther and farther behind.
Jimmy trails in through the doorway after her. Claire’s back is to him but he can catch glimpses of her distorted reflection in the circle of mirrors, a kaleidoscope face in the shifting shadows.
She doesn’t look very much like Claire anymore.
Hello, Jimmy, says Claire’s reflection. Four faces stare at him, different angles in different mirrors, eyes glued to his. The sound of the voice surrounds him, but it’s not coming from Claire.
Don’t be afraid. I have wanted to meet you for a long time.
It’s strange, he thinks, the way he can almost hear Claire as the voice speaks-but it is Claire speaking, isn’t it? There’s no one else here-but it’s too loud and too soft all at once, like he’s straining to hear something being shouted right in his ear.
Jimmy, she’s saying again. I have a question.
It’s not Claire, he decides, but if that’s not Claire, then where-
Who is it that you hold above all others? Who is the most important person to you?
The reflection’s gaze is still fixed firmly to his face, taking in his confusion, his frown. The most important? And he thinks, almost immediately, of Claire and Amelia, his family, the daughter and wife that he’d do anything for.
I see, Jimmy hears, but he hasn’t even opened his mouth to speak yet, and then Claire is just gone. The room is empty and still, and he is alone.
“Claire?” he calls out cautiously, and then, louder, “Claire! Where are you?”
And maybe he’s not alone after all, the wind brushing past him and away, the sound gentle and low and chilling.
She’s gone somewhere you cannot follow.
The dream’s forgotten by the time he wakes up.
~*~
Claire eventually realized, as she grew older, that church bored her.
This had always been true for her-maybe for a lot of people in general, she guesses-but actually realizing it was a whole other thing altogether. It makes a lot of sense now, really. There had been a reason she was slow to wake on Sunday mornings, reluctant to leave the house. The Bible that her parents always brought with them on Sundays had faint pencil marks in some of the pages, drawings of animals and flowers and angels with fluffy wings and wobbly halos, which her parents had made her erase when they saw just exactly what she was doodling on during the sermons. And the family that regularly sat next to the Novaks in church had dreaded the days she wore those dress shoes, the ones that clunked noisily when her swinging feet idly kicked the pew in front of her or tapped loudly against the floor when she got restless.
It’s not that she doesn’t believe in God or anything. She just doesn’t seem to have the patience to sit there for hours, listening to the pastor preach for so long that everything starts to sound the same, and she doesn’t think that God would really care much about something as small as this. Besides, it’s probably better than Lin, whose family doesn’t even go to church, or Colin, who sits with his parents in the very first row of the pews every week and steals cigarettes from his father to sell to the older boys at school.
But today, she sits there quietly, barely even fidgeting, rapt and attentive, because now she has Castiel.
Pastor Harrison is still speaking. He’s in top form today, hand gripped tightly on his podium as he speaks animatedly of Sodom and Gomorrah, denouncing their sins, and Claire throws the thought out: Were you there?
No, Castiel answers. Not personally. But a member of my garrison was.
Oh. Claire’s impressed but doesn’t know if emotions carry through the airwaves, so instead she asks, Why was Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt?
Because she looked back, is the response she gets.
That’s not what I mean, she thinks, wondering if Castiel can hear her exasperation. Why a pillar of salt? Why not a rock, or a tree, or-
I don’t understand why that is important, Castiel tells her, and for a being without a voice, he sounds mildly impatient and annoyed. Maybe he finds her questions pointless, but after a pause, he adds, I suppose I do not know, either.
After church, Claire and her parents go out for lunch at a diner just down the street from their house, as they always do. Claire’s ordered everything the restaurant serves at least once before, has the menu almost completely memorized by now. They’re seated in a booth by the counter, her parents deep in conversation about her mom’s job.
Claire frowns down at her napkin and eyes their menu. She tugs on her father’s sleeve. “Daddy, can we go somewhere else to eat next week?”
He glances down distractedly. “It thought you liked this place. We always come here,” he says, and it’s not exactly a “no,” but it’s definitely a brush-off.
“I know we always come here,” Claire tries again, but he’s already turning away.
The waiter brings their drinks, condensation dripping down the sides of the glass. Claire’s taking a sip when she notices the bug thrashing in her soda, and she hastily sets the glass down. It could be a fruit fly, or maybe a mosquito, but whatever it is, it’s tiny, its thread-thin legs scrabbling on the surface of her drink, droplets clinging to its wings.
She takes her straw, swirls it in the drink until it’s spinning like a whirlpool. The insect’s dragged along, until, half-drowned, it finally latches onto Claire’s straw.
Without thinking, she pushes it down into her drink, watches as the bug convulses once, twice, and then floats to the surface.
Claire, she hears, and she startles, but it’s only Castiel. He sounds disapproving. He’s just full of inflection today. You shouldn’t do things like that.
It was just a bug.
Even so. There’s a beat, and then something small is crawling out of Claire’s glass, legs twitching and waxy wings fluttering, finally flying off.
Jimmy and Amelia talk on, unnoticing.
~*~
Castiel never speaks down to her; at least, this is what she assumes, because she has never seen him speak to anyone else before. He doesn’t dumb things down or oversimplify-her parents do this sometimes, her teachers even more-but explains the things she doesn’t understand in a matter-of-fact tone. He speaks to her like an equal, and it’s exciting, flattering, even, and makes her want to live up to that expectation.
He’s not a constant presence, but Claire finds herself rarely watching television anymore, too bothered by the static and stuttering sound. She dreams about him sometimes, or maybe he’s visiting her then too, or maybe he is the dream.
It’s getting hard to tell.
But Claire still dreams, of ancient times and impossible creatures, of stepping into the sky and racing comets and catching a bit of the sun’s radiance for herself. A spark falls from the flames, grows, and then Jimmy is there, dimming the sun-or maybe he’s just brighter, by comparison.
Claire, he says, I wish to ask you something.
Okay, she replies. She thinks of asking him why he’s speaking so strangely, why he looks so somber and serious, but she swings on her crescent moon instead, strung to the clouds with strands of rain.
Who is the most important person to you?
And Claire stops, looks him in the eyes-so blue, were they ever so blue?-and laughs, open-mouthed and happy. Father! she answers, and the corners of his lips curve upward, slowly.
How much faith do you have in your father, Claire?
He’s speaking like something’s already been decided, finalized, and if there’s anything he’s hiding from her, she won’t find out until it’s too late.
~*~
Claire kneels by the bathtub, the water inside warm and still. “Are you sure?” she asks aloud, and Castiel’s yes is so soft she barely hears it. She’s in the middle of her last breath, one long, final inhale, when she feels the pressure between her shoulder blades, and she is pushed down gently, firmly.
“Wait-” she tries, but her face is already submerged. She chokes on the water flooding down her throat, her nose, and suddenly she feels stupid for doing this, wants to get up and just forget about this ridiculous experiment altogether. She tries to push herself up and stand, but there’s someone-Castiel, Castiel is effortlessly holding her down.
Trust me, Claire, he is saying, and just breathe out.
She does as he tells her, lets the air escape her lungs in a rushed stream of bubbles, and doesn’t breathe in. It’s not, she realizes with wonder, uncomfortable at all.
It’s quiet, and she opens her eyes, watching the way her hair floats and curls around her. The pressure on her back is gone, but she still stays under, everything motionless and tranquil. She can hear her heartbeat, sluggish and slow, and nothing else, and maybe this is what dying feels like.
She doesn’t know how long she’s there or notice the soft bump of someone’s hand on her elbow, doesn’t respond to the tug on her arm or the increasingly panicked grip shaking her. It’s only when she’s forcefully yanked out of the water-a breath, and she’s alive-that she responds, blinking the water out of her eyes and swiping wet hair from her face, and vaguely she registers that someone’s yelling and the water’s cold already, streaming down her neck, which has the most horrible crick in it, and dripping steadily onto the bathroom floor.
“What the hell were you doing, Claire?” Amelia is asking her. She looks terrified, face pale and eyes wide, and Claire doesn’t know why she looks so scared, wants to tell her that it’s all right, it’s Castiel, and Castiel is safe and powerful and amazing.
It only occurs to her that she spoke out loud, said something wrong, because Amelia, if possible, looks even more worried. “Who’s Castiel?” she asks. She doesn’t sound happy at all, looks, in fact, nervous and concerned, and Claire’s heart sinks in her chest even as she feels Castiel there, a solid presence in no one’s mind but her own.
~*~
Her parents take her to a doctor, one who throws out words like delusions and schizophrenia, asking Claire questions in calm, sympathetic tones while his pen scribbles furiously on his paper. How long has she known Castiel? What does he look like? What makes her think he’s an angel? How often does she go to church, how many friends does she have, has she been isolating herself recently? Does Castiel ever tell her to hurt herself?
“No,” she answers to the last question.
Her doctor nods, looks down at his notes. “But did you almost drown yourself in-”
“I wasn’t drowning myself,” Claire corrects. “I’m not hurting myself if I’m doing something that can’t hurt me.”
The doctor only shakes his head, weaving his words soothingly as if Claire is in danger of snapping at any moment, and she thinks she prefers Castiel’s frankness, his blunt directness instead.
The ride home is silent. Claire tells her parents good night, and it’s the only thing they say to her, even though she can hear them murmuring to each other when she’s barely out the hall. The whispers fade away by the time she’s in her room, the door still open.
They think I’m crazy.
You’re not, Castiel immediately replies. It’s more reassuring than it should be.
Of course you’d say that, if I really was crazy, Claire says, but she doesn’t mean it.
Castiel doesn’t speak for a long time, and Claire almost thinks he’s left when he says, You trust me.
Is that a statement or an order?
Do you know why you trust me? Castiel continues, as if he didn’t hear her question. Because I know you. Because they look at you, Claire Novak, but you think they don’t see you, not your mother or your father or-
But they love me, Claire interrupts. Despite the blanket, she feels cold. Isn’t that enough?
I see you, Claire Novak. You are not insignificant, not as powerless as you think you are, as others think you are. You can do great things.
How?
It’s in your blood, as it is in your father’s.
It makes Claire pause. Then why isn’t he the one? He’s so much... And she searches for a word, something to describe him, the one who taught her to whistle and bike and always seemed to be greater, somehow, unreachable and warm, and settles on more. He’s so much more.
Because, Castiel says slowly, as if divulging a secret, I chose you.
And it’s the way she hears it, the way Castiel says “you” that sounds like “only you,” the way it makes her think of Sunday morning at church with an angel, the quiet clarity underwater, the dreams where Castiel always watches, always there-
All you have to do is say yes.
The room is quiet. Claire breathes in.
Then… yes.
And the world explodes into blinding brilliance.
~*~
Almost ten months after Claire’s disappearance and three weeks after Amelia moved out, Jimmy gets another call from the police station. He rushes out of the office, phoning Amelia’s cell on the way there. She doesn’t pick up.
“We found something that could lead us to your daughter,” the detective tells him when he arrives, but her face is stern and she’s frowning. “A videotape taken two nights ago. See for yourself.”
The quality’s poor, even for a security camera outside a run-down gas station. The images don’t stay still, flickering across the screen as bursts of static flare up. There is no sound.
“There,” Jimmy suddenly says, scrabbling for the pause button on the remote, “that’s-that’s Claire, I don’t believe-”
She looks just the way he remembers her, features evident despite the shaky picture. Her hair is windswept, but her clothes-the same jacket and jeans that disappeared with her that night, pajamas folded neatly on her bed-are clean, and she looks well, from what he can tell from the video, not like a girl barely in her teens vanished into thin air for over half a year.
“Keep watching,” the officer tells him.
Claire is striding towards a man leaning casually next to a pump, the gas station deserted except for the two of them. He turns to face her and they exchange words, but before Jimmy can wonder what they’re saying, Claire pulls a fist back and slams it into the man’s face.
The remote Jimmy’s still holding clatters onto the table.
The man reels back, stunned, but not for long. He recovers and lunges towards Claire, knocks her down, hands reaching to close around her throat, and Jimmy grips the side of the table tightly, knuckles white.
Claire reaches up, palm on the man’s forehead and hand splayed out, perhaps searching blindly for her opponent’s eyes. Maybe it’s the quality of the camera, but there seems to be no expression on her face, no regard for the fingers digging into her neck. Then there’s a flash of light, and the video is over, nothing but more static and a faint afterimage.
“Equipment failure,” the officer explains, but Jimmy’s barely listening now, and the words man’s body found in the morning and murder suspect ring uselessly in his ears.
~*~
The next time Claire opens her eyes-as Claire, as herself, not Castiel-Dean Winchester is staring down at her, shaking her awake and calling Castiel’s name. Claire hurts, feels like she has bruises everywhere, and her first impression of Dean is (hellfirescreamingfindyousaveyou) unpleasant, his voice too loud for her pounding head, his brother’s voice just as grating.
Dean’s first impression of her is equally unimpressive. She’s the epitome of a kid getting into too much while too young, over her head in things she didn’t understand. Hell, even he didn’t understand most of what was going on, no thanks to the angels, but Castiel was different, Castiel was trying to tell him something, and now…
They take her with them-she has nowhere else to go-and pick up some fast food (“Kids like this stuff, right?” “You like this stuff, Dean.”) before stopping at their hotel.
They ask her what she remembers-not a whole lot, so far-as she eats. They question her and maybe it’s something Dean says, something Sam does, and she’s thinking of family, of home and her parents and oh god, her parents, she hopes Castiel-but no, she’s starting to realize, now, that he wouldn’t have stopped to explain, to comfort, not because he didn’t care, but because he didn’t understand, and she could barely swallow around the lump in her throat, breath in painful, hitching gasps.
“Oh, hell,” Dean says, “don’t-kid, don’t cry,” but he sits next to her anyway, hand on her back, soothing even as he and Sam explained that she couldn’t go home, not now with it so dangerous, not until they figured out what had happened to Castiel.
Claire thinks briefly of leaving that night, sneaking away while Dean was asleep and Sam had slipped out. But she has no money to make it all the way back home, and it makes her feel helpless and small and useless. And even if she does get home, what then? Wait for the demons to come, straight for her entire family? With Castiel gone, they have no protection.
So instead she digs through Dean’s jacket, pulling out his phone. Claire dials the familiar number, someone picking up after three long rings, and it’s Jimmy, his “Hello?” tired and gruff. She realizes belatedly that they must have been sleeping and hangs up without saying anything.
But she misses them, and it might be selfish, but she calls two more times that night. Each time, Jimmy always, always picks up the phone, like he’s been waiting.
Sam greets her with a grunt in the morning, Dean still asleep. “Remember anything during the night?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound hopeful. He doesn’t look like he got any sleep, the shadows under his eyes as dark as ever.
Claire tries to find the right way to explain it, being a vessel. It was overwhelming, in a way, so much to see and feel with new, different senses that a human like her had no way of understanding. “I get glimpses, sometimes,” she tells him slowly. “Moments where I can sort of-see, I guess. But nothing specific. Nothing that makes sense. I remember knowing both of you-” And here Sam freezes, listening closely. “-even if I don’t remember what it was exactly that I knew about you.” Sam’s looking at her strangely, and she doesn’t think she’s done a very good job of clarifying anything, but he doesn’t ask her anything else.
They’re just going back to their hotel after breakfast when the demons attack, vicious and dangerous and, worst of all, bored. They treat it like a game as they herd them onto the roof of the building. Dean and Sam are handling four of them together, while the last has Claire cornered on the far side of the hotel, slowly advancing on her. She steps back, and her foot lands on nothing but empty air, stepping past the ledge.
It’s nothing like a cartoon, no moment where she seems to be suspended in midair, just the feeling of vertigo as she overbalances and falls. But then there is the smell of ozone, as familiar to her now as the smell of her father’s cooking, her mother’s perfume, and the light’s consuming her again, Castiel’s presence fitting back in, but different, somehow, colder and sharper.
Where- she begins, already feeling herself slipping.
Castiel cuts her off-quiet, Claire-as the light goes out, and she is alone in the darkness.
~*~
Castiel is afraid.
The mere fact that Claire is lucid enough to know this means that something is wrong.
And there are other emotions too, wound together so tightly that she can’t tell them apart from her own, and she calls out, Castiel, what's happening? and feels a thread of panic and doubt that isn't hers. But what disturbs her most is still the fear, deeper than bone, straight down to the core. She stretches out in her own mind, searching for Castiel in the muddle and feels his surprise when she finds him.
I’m sorry, Castiel says, I’m- And he takes hold of Claire, trying to hide her away again, perhaps thinking it a kindness, but she refuses.
No, I want to see.
There’s another flash of indecision, and a fierce surge of respect, and only then does she get her moment of clarity, seeing the kitchen she’s standing in, ground shaking and walls coming apart. There’s a high-pitched whine in the air, getting louder as the room gets brighter, the feeling of eternity and chaos that she gets around Castiel thick in the air.
Dean is here too, staring out the window, almost as if mesmerized, and Castiel is saying something to him, voice laced with desperate determination.
“I’ll hold him off-”
Not insignificant, Castiel had once told her.
“-I’ll hold them all off-”
-not powerless-
“-just stop Sam!” And Dean is gone.
Castiel faces the window, stares into the brilliance and the fury.
(You can do great things, he once told her.
This was what she had wanted.
Right?)
She reaches out tentatively for Castiel, and then there’s sorrow, such a sudden stab that she recoils.
I’m sorry, Castiel tells her again, I do not think I can bring you back to your family. I can only send you home.
What do you mean? What about you? Castiel will be all right, he will, he has to-
Where you’re going, I cannot follow.
It’s the last thing Claire hears, before the light and the fadeaway and the pain, and someone is screaming, voice high and clear and young as the world fractures and shatters and-
And she’s opening her eyes, home again, exactly as she remembers it.
But they do agree-quietly, of course, and never when Jimmy and Amelia are around-that it’s a good story, from an objective spectator’s point of view. And they’re all spectators here, aren’t they, keeping a close watch on the papers and news reports, visiting the Novaks to ask about everyday trivialities in one breath and their missing daughter in the next. Collecting-even as they warn their own children to stay close, don’t wander, never wander-articles with Claire’s face splashed across the pages in bold colors with bolder headlines, paragraphs of fact and speculation crammed so tightly together that they began to blur.
People love a good story, as long as it isn’t happening to them.
Claire smiles down from pictures stapled to telephone poles and wooden fences, stares up from police reports and missing person posters torn from walls and railings by weather and time. She goes from being just Claire Novak to Haveyouseenthisgirl?ClaireNovak, the friend of a friend that everyone suddenly knew-oh yes, I’ve met her before-did you hear what they’re saying about her now-
And if none of those people know that the morning Amelia went to wake Claire up for school, the bed was already cold, the doors and windows still locked, well. It wouldn’t have helped them find her, anyway.
~*~
Weeks ago, August heat melts into September, and Claire is safe and home and drifting away. Jimmy dreams, the mundane and the extraordinary creeping behind his eyelids: a road, a revolving sky, the sound of thunder on his heels.
And then he’s at a campground, the carnival he and Amelia took Claire to on her fifth birthday. Jimmy thinks of Claire at five, still short enough that she had to reach up to grasp her parents’ hands, a small, steady figure linking them all together. Even now he remembers how had she refused to ride the Ferris wheel, skipping past the operator and the games (rigged, probably, so Amelia would never let her play, but later that day Jimmy snuck her a dollar anyway, when Amelia wasn’t watching) to head straight for the funhouse. In his dream she is far ahead, slipping her way easily through gaps in the crowd as he falls farther and farther behind.
Jimmy trails in through the doorway after her. Claire’s back is to him but he can catch glimpses of her distorted reflection in the circle of mirrors, a kaleidoscope face in the shifting shadows.
She doesn’t look very much like Claire anymore.
Hello, Jimmy, says Claire’s reflection. Four faces stare at him, different angles in different mirrors, eyes glued to his. The sound of the voice surrounds him, but it’s not coming from Claire.
Don’t be afraid. I have wanted to meet you for a long time.
It’s strange, he thinks, the way he can almost hear Claire as the voice speaks-but it is Claire speaking, isn’t it? There’s no one else here-but it’s too loud and too soft all at once, like he’s straining to hear something being shouted right in his ear.
Jimmy, she’s saying again. I have a question.
It’s not Claire, he decides, but if that’s not Claire, then where-
Who is it that you hold above all others? Who is the most important person to you?
The reflection’s gaze is still fixed firmly to his face, taking in his confusion, his frown. The most important? And he thinks, almost immediately, of Claire and Amelia, his family, the daughter and wife that he’d do anything for.
I see, Jimmy hears, but he hasn’t even opened his mouth to speak yet, and then Claire is just gone. The room is empty and still, and he is alone.
“Claire?” he calls out cautiously, and then, louder, “Claire! Where are you?”
And maybe he’s not alone after all, the wind brushing past him and away, the sound gentle and low and chilling.
She’s gone somewhere you cannot follow.
The dream’s forgotten by the time he wakes up.
~*~
Claire eventually realized, as she grew older, that church bored her.
This had always been true for her-maybe for a lot of people in general, she guesses-but actually realizing it was a whole other thing altogether. It makes a lot of sense now, really. There had been a reason she was slow to wake on Sunday mornings, reluctant to leave the house. The Bible that her parents always brought with them on Sundays had faint pencil marks in some of the pages, drawings of animals and flowers and angels with fluffy wings and wobbly halos, which her parents had made her erase when they saw just exactly what she was doodling on during the sermons. And the family that regularly sat next to the Novaks in church had dreaded the days she wore those dress shoes, the ones that clunked noisily when her swinging feet idly kicked the pew in front of her or tapped loudly against the floor when she got restless.
It’s not that she doesn’t believe in God or anything. She just doesn’t seem to have the patience to sit there for hours, listening to the pastor preach for so long that everything starts to sound the same, and she doesn’t think that God would really care much about something as small as this. Besides, it’s probably better than Lin, whose family doesn’t even go to church, or Colin, who sits with his parents in the very first row of the pews every week and steals cigarettes from his father to sell to the older boys at school.
But today, she sits there quietly, barely even fidgeting, rapt and attentive, because now she has Castiel.
Pastor Harrison is still speaking. He’s in top form today, hand gripped tightly on his podium as he speaks animatedly of Sodom and Gomorrah, denouncing their sins, and Claire throws the thought out: Were you there?
No, Castiel answers. Not personally. But a member of my garrison was.
Oh. Claire’s impressed but doesn’t know if emotions carry through the airwaves, so instead she asks, Why was Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt?
Because she looked back, is the response she gets.
That’s not what I mean, she thinks, wondering if Castiel can hear her exasperation. Why a pillar of salt? Why not a rock, or a tree, or-
I don’t understand why that is important, Castiel tells her, and for a being without a voice, he sounds mildly impatient and annoyed. Maybe he finds her questions pointless, but after a pause, he adds, I suppose I do not know, either.
After church, Claire and her parents go out for lunch at a diner just down the street from their house, as they always do. Claire’s ordered everything the restaurant serves at least once before, has the menu almost completely memorized by now. They’re seated in a booth by the counter, her parents deep in conversation about her mom’s job.
Claire frowns down at her napkin and eyes their menu. She tugs on her father’s sleeve. “Daddy, can we go somewhere else to eat next week?”
He glances down distractedly. “It thought you liked this place. We always come here,” he says, and it’s not exactly a “no,” but it’s definitely a brush-off.
“I know we always come here,” Claire tries again, but he’s already turning away.
The waiter brings their drinks, condensation dripping down the sides of the glass. Claire’s taking a sip when she notices the bug thrashing in her soda, and she hastily sets the glass down. It could be a fruit fly, or maybe a mosquito, but whatever it is, it’s tiny, its thread-thin legs scrabbling on the surface of her drink, droplets clinging to its wings.
She takes her straw, swirls it in the drink until it’s spinning like a whirlpool. The insect’s dragged along, until, half-drowned, it finally latches onto Claire’s straw.
Without thinking, she pushes it down into her drink, watches as the bug convulses once, twice, and then floats to the surface.
Claire, she hears, and she startles, but it’s only Castiel. He sounds disapproving. He’s just full of inflection today. You shouldn’t do things like that.
It was just a bug.
Even so. There’s a beat, and then something small is crawling out of Claire’s glass, legs twitching and waxy wings fluttering, finally flying off.
Jimmy and Amelia talk on, unnoticing.
~*~
Castiel never speaks down to her; at least, this is what she assumes, because she has never seen him speak to anyone else before. He doesn’t dumb things down or oversimplify-her parents do this sometimes, her teachers even more-but explains the things she doesn’t understand in a matter-of-fact tone. He speaks to her like an equal, and it’s exciting, flattering, even, and makes her want to live up to that expectation.
He’s not a constant presence, but Claire finds herself rarely watching television anymore, too bothered by the static and stuttering sound. She dreams about him sometimes, or maybe he’s visiting her then too, or maybe he is the dream.
It’s getting hard to tell.
But Claire still dreams, of ancient times and impossible creatures, of stepping into the sky and racing comets and catching a bit of the sun’s radiance for herself. A spark falls from the flames, grows, and then Jimmy is there, dimming the sun-or maybe he’s just brighter, by comparison.
Claire, he says, I wish to ask you something.
Okay, she replies. She thinks of asking him why he’s speaking so strangely, why he looks so somber and serious, but she swings on her crescent moon instead, strung to the clouds with strands of rain.
Who is the most important person to you?
And Claire stops, looks him in the eyes-so blue, were they ever so blue?-and laughs, open-mouthed and happy. Father! she answers, and the corners of his lips curve upward, slowly.
How much faith do you have in your father, Claire?
He’s speaking like something’s already been decided, finalized, and if there’s anything he’s hiding from her, she won’t find out until it’s too late.
~*~
Claire kneels by the bathtub, the water inside warm and still. “Are you sure?” she asks aloud, and Castiel’s yes is so soft she barely hears it. She’s in the middle of her last breath, one long, final inhale, when she feels the pressure between her shoulder blades, and she is pushed down gently, firmly.
“Wait-” she tries, but her face is already submerged. She chokes on the water flooding down her throat, her nose, and suddenly she feels stupid for doing this, wants to get up and just forget about this ridiculous experiment altogether. She tries to push herself up and stand, but there’s someone-Castiel, Castiel is effortlessly holding her down.
Trust me, Claire, he is saying, and just breathe out.
She does as he tells her, lets the air escape her lungs in a rushed stream of bubbles, and doesn’t breathe in. It’s not, she realizes with wonder, uncomfortable at all.
It’s quiet, and she opens her eyes, watching the way her hair floats and curls around her. The pressure on her back is gone, but she still stays under, everything motionless and tranquil. She can hear her heartbeat, sluggish and slow, and nothing else, and maybe this is what dying feels like.
She doesn’t know how long she’s there or notice the soft bump of someone’s hand on her elbow, doesn’t respond to the tug on her arm or the increasingly panicked grip shaking her. It’s only when she’s forcefully yanked out of the water-a breath, and she’s alive-that she responds, blinking the water out of her eyes and swiping wet hair from her face, and vaguely she registers that someone’s yelling and the water’s cold already, streaming down her neck, which has the most horrible crick in it, and dripping steadily onto the bathroom floor.
“What the hell were you doing, Claire?” Amelia is asking her. She looks terrified, face pale and eyes wide, and Claire doesn’t know why she looks so scared, wants to tell her that it’s all right, it’s Castiel, and Castiel is safe and powerful and amazing.
It only occurs to her that she spoke out loud, said something wrong, because Amelia, if possible, looks even more worried. “Who’s Castiel?” she asks. She doesn’t sound happy at all, looks, in fact, nervous and concerned, and Claire’s heart sinks in her chest even as she feels Castiel there, a solid presence in no one’s mind but her own.
~*~
Her parents take her to a doctor, one who throws out words like delusions and schizophrenia, asking Claire questions in calm, sympathetic tones while his pen scribbles furiously on his paper. How long has she known Castiel? What does he look like? What makes her think he’s an angel? How often does she go to church, how many friends does she have, has she been isolating herself recently? Does Castiel ever tell her to hurt herself?
“No,” she answers to the last question.
Her doctor nods, looks down at his notes. “But did you almost drown yourself in-”
“I wasn’t drowning myself,” Claire corrects. “I’m not hurting myself if I’m doing something that can’t hurt me.”
The doctor only shakes his head, weaving his words soothingly as if Claire is in danger of snapping at any moment, and she thinks she prefers Castiel’s frankness, his blunt directness instead.
The ride home is silent. Claire tells her parents good night, and it’s the only thing they say to her, even though she can hear them murmuring to each other when she’s barely out the hall. The whispers fade away by the time she’s in her room, the door still open.
They think I’m crazy.
You’re not, Castiel immediately replies. It’s more reassuring than it should be.
Of course you’d say that, if I really was crazy, Claire says, but she doesn’t mean it.
Castiel doesn’t speak for a long time, and Claire almost thinks he’s left when he says, You trust me.
Is that a statement or an order?
Do you know why you trust me? Castiel continues, as if he didn’t hear her question. Because I know you. Because they look at you, Claire Novak, but you think they don’t see you, not your mother or your father or-
But they love me, Claire interrupts. Despite the blanket, she feels cold. Isn’t that enough?
I see you, Claire Novak. You are not insignificant, not as powerless as you think you are, as others think you are. You can do great things.
How?
It’s in your blood, as it is in your father’s.
It makes Claire pause. Then why isn’t he the one? He’s so much... And she searches for a word, something to describe him, the one who taught her to whistle and bike and always seemed to be greater, somehow, unreachable and warm, and settles on more. He’s so much more.
Because, Castiel says slowly, as if divulging a secret, I chose you.
And it’s the way she hears it, the way Castiel says “you” that sounds like “only you,” the way it makes her think of Sunday morning at church with an angel, the quiet clarity underwater, the dreams where Castiel always watches, always there-
All you have to do is say yes.
The room is quiet. Claire breathes in.
Then… yes.
And the world explodes into blinding brilliance.
~*~
Almost ten months after Claire’s disappearance and three weeks after Amelia moved out, Jimmy gets another call from the police station. He rushes out of the office, phoning Amelia’s cell on the way there. She doesn’t pick up.
“We found something that could lead us to your daughter,” the detective tells him when he arrives, but her face is stern and she’s frowning. “A videotape taken two nights ago. See for yourself.”
The quality’s poor, even for a security camera outside a run-down gas station. The images don’t stay still, flickering across the screen as bursts of static flare up. There is no sound.
“There,” Jimmy suddenly says, scrabbling for the pause button on the remote, “that’s-that’s Claire, I don’t believe-”
She looks just the way he remembers her, features evident despite the shaky picture. Her hair is windswept, but her clothes-the same jacket and jeans that disappeared with her that night, pajamas folded neatly on her bed-are clean, and she looks well, from what he can tell from the video, not like a girl barely in her teens vanished into thin air for over half a year.
“Keep watching,” the officer tells him.
Claire is striding towards a man leaning casually next to a pump, the gas station deserted except for the two of them. He turns to face her and they exchange words, but before Jimmy can wonder what they’re saying, Claire pulls a fist back and slams it into the man’s face.
The remote Jimmy’s still holding clatters onto the table.
The man reels back, stunned, but not for long. He recovers and lunges towards Claire, knocks her down, hands reaching to close around her throat, and Jimmy grips the side of the table tightly, knuckles white.
Claire reaches up, palm on the man’s forehead and hand splayed out, perhaps searching blindly for her opponent’s eyes. Maybe it’s the quality of the camera, but there seems to be no expression on her face, no regard for the fingers digging into her neck. Then there’s a flash of light, and the video is over, nothing but more static and a faint afterimage.
“Equipment failure,” the officer explains, but Jimmy’s barely listening now, and the words man’s body found in the morning and murder suspect ring uselessly in his ears.
~*~
The next time Claire opens her eyes-as Claire, as herself, not Castiel-Dean Winchester is staring down at her, shaking her awake and calling Castiel’s name. Claire hurts, feels like she has bruises everywhere, and her first impression of Dean is (hellfirescreamingfindyousaveyou) unpleasant, his voice too loud for her pounding head, his brother’s voice just as grating.
Dean’s first impression of her is equally unimpressive. She’s the epitome of a kid getting into too much while too young, over her head in things she didn’t understand. Hell, even he didn’t understand most of what was going on, no thanks to the angels, but Castiel was different, Castiel was trying to tell him something, and now…
They take her with them-she has nowhere else to go-and pick up some fast food (“Kids like this stuff, right?” “You like this stuff, Dean.”) before stopping at their hotel.
They ask her what she remembers-not a whole lot, so far-as she eats. They question her and maybe it’s something Dean says, something Sam does, and she’s thinking of family, of home and her parents and oh god, her parents, she hopes Castiel-but no, she’s starting to realize, now, that he wouldn’t have stopped to explain, to comfort, not because he didn’t care, but because he didn’t understand, and she could barely swallow around the lump in her throat, breath in painful, hitching gasps.
“Oh, hell,” Dean says, “don’t-kid, don’t cry,” but he sits next to her anyway, hand on her back, soothing even as he and Sam explained that she couldn’t go home, not now with it so dangerous, not until they figured out what had happened to Castiel.
Claire thinks briefly of leaving that night, sneaking away while Dean was asleep and Sam had slipped out. But she has no money to make it all the way back home, and it makes her feel helpless and small and useless. And even if she does get home, what then? Wait for the demons to come, straight for her entire family? With Castiel gone, they have no protection.
So instead she digs through Dean’s jacket, pulling out his phone. Claire dials the familiar number, someone picking up after three long rings, and it’s Jimmy, his “Hello?” tired and gruff. She realizes belatedly that they must have been sleeping and hangs up without saying anything.
But she misses them, and it might be selfish, but she calls two more times that night. Each time, Jimmy always, always picks up the phone, like he’s been waiting.
Sam greets her with a grunt in the morning, Dean still asleep. “Remember anything during the night?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound hopeful. He doesn’t look like he got any sleep, the shadows under his eyes as dark as ever.
Claire tries to find the right way to explain it, being a vessel. It was overwhelming, in a way, so much to see and feel with new, different senses that a human like her had no way of understanding. “I get glimpses, sometimes,” she tells him slowly. “Moments where I can sort of-see, I guess. But nothing specific. Nothing that makes sense. I remember knowing both of you-” And here Sam freezes, listening closely. “-even if I don’t remember what it was exactly that I knew about you.” Sam’s looking at her strangely, and she doesn’t think she’s done a very good job of clarifying anything, but he doesn’t ask her anything else.
They’re just going back to their hotel after breakfast when the demons attack, vicious and dangerous and, worst of all, bored. They treat it like a game as they herd them onto the roof of the building. Dean and Sam are handling four of them together, while the last has Claire cornered on the far side of the hotel, slowly advancing on her. She steps back, and her foot lands on nothing but empty air, stepping past the ledge.
It’s nothing like a cartoon, no moment where she seems to be suspended in midair, just the feeling of vertigo as she overbalances and falls. But then there is the smell of ozone, as familiar to her now as the smell of her father’s cooking, her mother’s perfume, and the light’s consuming her again, Castiel’s presence fitting back in, but different, somehow, colder and sharper.
Where- she begins, already feeling herself slipping.
Castiel cuts her off-quiet, Claire-as the light goes out, and she is alone in the darkness.
~*~
Castiel is afraid.
The mere fact that Claire is lucid enough to know this means that something is wrong.
And there are other emotions too, wound together so tightly that she can’t tell them apart from her own, and she calls out, Castiel, what's happening? and feels a thread of panic and doubt that isn't hers. But what disturbs her most is still the fear, deeper than bone, straight down to the core. She stretches out in her own mind, searching for Castiel in the muddle and feels his surprise when she finds him.
I’m sorry, Castiel says, I’m- And he takes hold of Claire, trying to hide her away again, perhaps thinking it a kindness, but she refuses.
No, I want to see.
There’s another flash of indecision, and a fierce surge of respect, and only then does she get her moment of clarity, seeing the kitchen she’s standing in, ground shaking and walls coming apart. There’s a high-pitched whine in the air, getting louder as the room gets brighter, the feeling of eternity and chaos that she gets around Castiel thick in the air.
Dean is here too, staring out the window, almost as if mesmerized, and Castiel is saying something to him, voice laced with desperate determination.
“I’ll hold him off-”
Not insignificant, Castiel had once told her.
“-I’ll hold them all off-”
-not powerless-
“-just stop Sam!” And Dean is gone.
Castiel faces the window, stares into the brilliance and the fury.
(You can do great things, he once told her.
This was what she had wanted.
Right?)
She reaches out tentatively for Castiel, and then there’s sorrow, such a sudden stab that she recoils.
I’m sorry, Castiel tells her again, I do not think I can bring you back to your family. I can only send you home.
What do you mean? What about you? Castiel will be all right, he will, he has to-
Where you’re going, I cannot follow.
It’s the last thing Claire hears, before the light and the fadeaway and the pain, and someone is screaming, voice high and clear and young as the world fractures and shatters and-
And she’s opening her eyes, home again, exactly as she remembers it.